When rulers redraw borders, the first question they ask is which gods will legitimize the new order. State cults receive tax exemptions and parade routes; rival traditions get nudged to the margins or outright banned. Communities adapt with layered strategies, some hide their icons behind household curtains, others strike deals with magistrates, and a few take up arms rather than surrender the right to worship. I chronicle these negotiations because they shape how neighborhoods look, sound, and feel, and because they determine which voices from Hands of Authority will be heard.

Persecution rarely arrives as a single decree. It seeps in through licensing laws, trade embargoes on ritual goods, or whispered denunciations that make employers wary. Conversely, genuine tolerance sometimes grows out of pure pragmatism: markets thrive when festival days alternate fairly, and armies prefer soldiers who feel seen by the gods they carry into battle. Even skeptics who dismiss divine reliability know belief can stabilize or destabilize entire provinces.

Every character in this world calculates risk when they step into a shrine. Devotion is personal, but its consequences are public, and the balance between faith and safety shifts with each political gust. Those calculations happen in tandem with the cultural blending I track in Religions in Motion; persecution and syncretism are often two sides of the same coin.